In response to these criticisms, ICANN in February of its new gTLD plan. In this draft, ICANN proposes reducing the annual cost for new gTLDs to $25,000 plus .25 per transaction per year for domains with more than 50,000 registered names.

ICANN says it will solicit more input from the Internet community over the next 60 days on the issues of how new gTLDs will affect stability and security of the Internet, how to protect trademarks and whether there is market demand for new domain extensions.

ICANN also has set up a special study group to look at the impact of many simultaneous changes to DNS root zone operations, including new gTLDs and DNSSEC.

"I'm part of a small group that is helping pull experts together to provide technically oriented advice...about what might exist at the root with all of these things being added contemporaneously," Mohan said.

VeriSign backs the idea of new gTLDs.